Probing syllable structure through acoustic measurements: case studies on American English and Jazani Arabic

Abstract

Previous research has found that different syllabic (particularly simplex vs. complex onset) organisations have different temporal stability signatures in articulations – this observation is based entirely on articulatory measurements. In this article, we present the results of three production experiments which show that similar correlations between onset organisation and temporal stability metrics are observable in an analysis of acoustic measurements in American English and Jazani Arabic. The results that we present show stability across speakers and test items for both language groups, and highlight the possibility of using acoustic techniques to help to investigate the organisation of onsets in other languages.